[brandonb]

Fiber is the ultimate nutritional power tool.

Not only does fiber reduce cardiovascular mortality by 26% (by cutting cholesterol), surprisingly enough, fiber even reduces your risk of cancer by 22%: https://www.empirical.health/blog/dietary-fiber-reduces-all-...

(Oatmeal is high in fiber, among other things, which I think is part of what's going on here.)

[davidmurdoch]

Oatmeal is extra special because of it has high amounts of beta glucan, a soluble fiber.

[EPWN3D]

I wonder, do overnight oats wind up processing away a lot of the benefits? Do steel-cut oats have more of an effect on cholesterol than rolled?

[ac29]

> I wonder, do overnight oats wind up processing away a lot of the benefits?

Overnight oats are just normal oats left in liquid overnight to skip the cooking step.

What processing were you thinking of? If anything they are less processed than normal oats since they aren't cooked.

[canadiantim]

I'd bet that oatmeal helps cancer due to increased elimination from the GI system, like any fibre

[buzzerbetrayed]

Oh boy. Now we’re entering the fiber era. We’re just leaving the protein era. Before that it was the intermittent fasting era. Before that it was the keto era. The low fat era was probably a few before that.

I hear about fiber constantly all of the sudden. You might be right about it, but how do we know it’s different than. All the past nutrition tends?

[zem]

I'm in my 50s and I've been hearing about the benefits of fibre pretty much all my life. I doubt it's some sort of diet fad.

[bulbar]

Idk about cholesterol, fiber is well known to be very healthy. Same for protein.

Losing body fat will often have the biggest impact by far if one is overweight, though. It also stabilizes blood sugar and has a lot of benefits in general.

[midnitewarrior]

Before manufactured insulin shots, the treatment for diabetes was a multi-day oatmeal fast. This has been around for many decades. The only thing that's changed is that you are finally hearing about it.

[rybosworld]

It is funny how you can break diet/nutrition into generations like this.

I think the trends are a reflection of poor education. Fiber/protein/whatever being important components of a diet isn't new information. But the information is new to folks that never had nutrition explained to them.

[strken]

I feel like we're due for something really ridiculous next. I've been paying attention to macros, fibre, salt, and having a reasonably varied diet for years; we've done salt, fat, carbs, protein, and now we're doing fibre.

"Eat a varied diet" seems boring but maybe those influencers selling pills made from 500 vegetables were ahead of the curve all along.

[rmast]

It would probably be better to just eat all those different vegetables as part of actual meals to get a varied diet, rather than in pill form.

I was under the impression that more protein and less salt/fat/carbs are still kinda the trend? If more fiber gets added to the mix I guess it is essentially telling people to eat more plants, thus leading to more varied diets overall.

[rickydroll]

> I was under the impression that more protein and less salt/fat/carbs are still kinda the trend?

kinda sorta. The low-carb, higher-protein diet is standard diet advice for T2D, and even more so if on a GLP-1 drug to reduce muscle loss.

[7bit]

I heard about fiber for the last 30 years. But I'm also not American.

[Hikikomori]

Heard about fiber all my life, but also went in school in Europe.

[bionaut]

Because the trends are bullshit and nutrition is just not that complicated.

The trends are a strange type of nutrition entertainment for people to read and then ignore in practice. There is some kind of psychological comfort in the knowing you can switch to oatmeal next week while gorging yourself at the Cheesecake Factory.

Oatmeal is good for you. News at a 11. We have known this for at least that last 50 years.

[happytoexplain]

Wait, how does fiber cut cholesterol?

The article is a little densely worded.

[jjtheblunt]

iirc, from older articles, which differ from this nice result, bile acids contain cholesterol(s) and they're generally reabsorbed in the intestines, so the fiber is conjectured to bind with some before reabsorption, expelling the bound fraction of circulating cholesterol in feces.

this result in the paper is very interesting in the conjecture is that the gut microbiome is altered in a beneficial way, and that the effect (with the resulting lowering of cholesterol) persists for weeks after even 2 days of oats.

[kulahan]

We know almost nothing about how digestion works, but fiber has the added benefit of lining your intestines, preventing the absorption of some nutrients. It also helps push things through, so they spend less time sitting around being absorbed.

[lanfeust6]

In related fashion, you might be interested in reading about the impact of soy protein.

[AnonC]

Can you please elaborate and/or provide links?

[aziaziazi]

I'll recommend starting here https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/soy/ (link of studies at the bottom of the page)

Takeways related to parent:

- "cardiovascular mortality ": > eating approximately 50 grams of soy protein a day (no small amount as this translates to 1½ pounds of tofu or eight 8-ounce glasses of soy milk!) in place of animal protein reduced harmful LDL cholesterol by 12.9 percent. [1] Such reductions, if sustained over time, could mean a greater than 20% lower risk of heart attack, stroke, or other forms of cardiovascular disease.

- "risk of cancer": many studies shows breast and prostate cancer reduction, but that is probably more related to isoflavones (Phytoestrogen) than fibers.

[oarfish]

> in place of animal protein

makes it sound like this is unrelated to soy specifically and more about displacing less healthful things (like higher saturated fat and caloric animal sources)

[aziaziazi]

That’s fair. Re-reading the citation: tofu and soy milk contains very low amount of fibers so it’s probably not a greet exemple to illustrate "soy protein" if the fibers are at play. Or they aren’t. A dive into the source seems reasonable.

Note that saturated fat is also present in plants based food like peanut butter, although that one also contains tons of fibers (absent in animal sources). Coconut oil on the other hand is a tasty evil.

[lanfeust6]

Read further research, there are some meta reviews. Soy protein yields results that other plant proteins don't.